RE: <nettime> joxe's empire of disorder

["Douglass " <doug@bigmindmedia.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
[mailto:nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net] On Behalf Of Brian Holmes
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 11:08 AM
To: nettime
Subject: Re: <nettime> joxe's empire of disorder

>Keith's Hart's answer to Ken Wark is brilliant writing, because it 
takes all the terms of the arguments seriously enough, and 
historically enough, that a next step can then be envisaged. Keith 
recounts "the formation [in the 1860s-70s] of new industrial states 
by means of national revolutions from above, all in the name of 
democracy and science." I'd say the next step or the next scale of 
that kind of argument begins right here


Comment: I agree and have the following thought.  

One question is, where does social belief go in a period that looks like
punctuated equilibrium? My view is that we are in an entropic civilization
-our social institutions in their decay are producing free and chaotic
human energy. I believe that the future depends upon a vision that is

1.	Responsive to real conditions, human nature, ecology, and large
populations
2.	Optimistic about human development
3.	Optimistic about the use of technology
4.	Fair in outcomes
5.	Just in practice
6.	Fascinated and conserving of cultural traditions
7.	Fascinated and creative of cultural futures

In chaos theory there is the idea of what is called a "strange attractor".
It is the point around which forces gather and replicate themselves. The
nation state has been the strange attractor of the last 200 years. It is
being undone by the passing of sovereignty, not to the people, but to
corporations, and corporations are less interested in the total welfare
and they are of the good of their own limited ownership.

Watching its emergence over the last couple of decades I've become
convinced that "sustainability", for all its logical inconsistencies, is
the strange attractor for a non fascist future.

Here, in the form of a party platform -liberal or conservative - is the
idea.

There are two models of the future.  One is that a free market leading to
human abundance.  But where in fact governments and large businesses work
together for control of markets.  The ideology is individualist and
entrepreneurial but the practice is simply one of control and
centralization is a world of administration.  It lacks the theory of the
relation of the economy and society to the environment, and lacks a theory
of society, and it lacks any understanding or honoring of the deep human
capacity for compassion which should lead to a practical culture of
individuals, and especially leaders, with social responsibility for the
well-being for all.

The second model is based on the broader sense of human nature.  It simply
says that we can use our minds to put together an economy and governments
under the leading idea of sustainability by the active use of technology,
existing and emerging, and create a vibrant economy both less extractive
and with many more transactions.  It would be an economy that has a chance
of coming closer to meeting the full range of human needs..

In the current market, with an over production of consumer durables, and
too many people with jobs in administration and too many people
unemployed, could, if encouraged, shift to a world where more complex
human needs and desires, such as more attractive education and more
attractive living environments.

This framework has a chance of providing guidance on emerging social
questions such as genetic food manipulation, the implications of the
genome project for health, ways to allocate health resources across the
population, to foster quicker and more judicious and fair legal systems,
and above all create the conditions for a society of civility and art and
humor and dignity.

The simple platform is

.	The framework of sustainability taken seriously
.	A vital economy with many more transactions with less extraction
and pollution, making full use of the potentials of technology and human
ingenuity.
.	A focus on government programs that enter into partnerships with
local and regional authorities to implement the above guidelines through
making available tax dollars and knowledge of alternative models.
.	A posture towards the rest of the world that is friendlier and
more supportive of democratic and human development agendas, based more
on the projection of American ideals than the projection of American
power.

These four points would be supported by the following:

.	The quick reduction of all current subsidies which support non
sustainable business practices.
.	A steady evolutionary shift of the tax code from income to
environmental extraction and resource use.
.	Rethinking the speed and fairness of our criminal justice system
.	Rethinking the legal framework for corporate charters
.	A cabinet level position on appropriate technology

Our understanding is that this framework will go a long way to providing
guidance on many other crucial questions, such as the nature of education,
investment, and financial rewards.

This approach is based on four primary perspectives.

.	The need for an environmentally sane policy
.	The recognition that business is a strategy for meeting humans,
not a game for individual wealth gathering
.	A society fit for the human life cycle
.	The need for complex governance in the world with 6 billion
people
.	The idea that constitutions imply what they mean: a balance of
parts. That means that

o	Global
o	National
o	Regional 
o	Local
o	And individuals

have approximately equal access to power and money and leverage so that
each level can manifest its creativity and responsiveness to the whole
situation.

This second model recognizes human creativity and initiative and provides
a framework which is socially responsive. This model acknowledges that
life does not have solutions, but only approaches and agreements and that
each generation will bring its own energy, learning, and initiative to the
situation as it finds it.  We respect all that the past brings us and can
teach us, each generation knows that the responsibility is now it's own.

We believe that this platform would be not only good for America, but
attractive to the world, and provide a framework for fulsomely lived
individual lives, in a context of attractive citizenship responsibilities,
in a much safer world for people of all ages and most traditions.


Douglass Carmichael 
email doug@bigmindmedia.com
home page www.dougcarmichael.com
weblog www.dougcarmichael.com/roughcut.html






#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net